DESPITE the continuing Covid-19 restrictions and a lot less cheer around the tracks, Irish racing provided us with plenty to talk about this week. Shure, twas as if nothing has changed from any other year.

An unexpected well-backed winner in Navan, an unexpected winner, by 39 lengths no less, in Listowel. Both winners, predictably, produced the usual media outcry – “disgrace, Irish racing is corrupt, the poor punter is the one who suffers...”

The two incidents were very different but the general ire came from punters and potential punters who, in both circumstances, felt hard done by.

The comments were of course divided on the Dreal Deal gamble. “Racing’s dreadful image,” “gangsters”, “would not back an Irish horse race if I was given the money,” said the critics.

Taking a different view were those who said “fair play”, “the small guy taking on the big guys in the only way they can – lay one out for a plot”, “it brings excitement to the racing game to see the small trainer pull one off” and “good for anyone who can land a gamble, sure the big guys do it all the time, not an eye blinked.”

Established and respected names were quoted, such as J.P., Sir Mark, Easterby, Skelton.

Ronan McNally, it was suggested, pulled a stroke in winning at Navan with Dreal Deal, a horse with little racecourse form, backed from 20s down to 6/4 favourite, yet winning with a great deal in hand.

The handicapper suggested the horse had run 2st above what he had achieved in his previous National Hunt starts. Someone knew he was going to leave his previous form behind and profitted, something the general punter didn’t.

On that score, of course, we are not in the Yellow Sam times where elaborate plots can be carried out against the bookies. Nowadays all odds movements are easily tracked, and significant bets on outsiders are quickly flagged so that, in theory, anyone clued in can join in the gamble.

The matter has been passed to the Referrals Committee for further investigation and the new improved Dreal Deal went up 19lb, which did not please his trainer. But what is the handicapper supposed to do to be fair to every other trainer?

McNally pointed out in the Racing Post that ‘There are gambles landed every day of the week that nothing is done about it, yet they tackle a lad who is training six of his own horses.”

That may be a valid point but it’s not the first time a McNally horse found markedly improved form. You put your money down but you also pay the price if you are good at it.

Last year The Baba Elephant had a run of figures /8000P09/0 before he ran into a vein of form in weak races in the UK and this also led to some stewards’ enquiries over there.

The yard’s other summer winner, The Trigger, was in the wilderness [0927F/90098] before he caught the winning habit. The Jam Man’s winning run last season came off a sequence which read 6702F9P/07 and since Cheltenham he had managed flat placings of 14/14, 15/18 and 13/14 before being pulled up at Galway.

He had been thought good enough to run in the Grade 1 Stayers’ Hurdle in Cheltenham, and had risen to a rating of 138 but, had by the handicapper’s assessment, run to ratings of zero twice, 40 and 32 on those four runs, three on the flat, this summer.

Looking at those efforts in Gowran and Navan, it seems a fair bit of perseverance by connections to be running the horse, if he was so far below form and was known to be suffering from a breathing infection, that’s assuming he was being scoped as he was reported to have been, before his improved recent run in Limerick.

For all the ‘good on ya son’ comments, it does leave a good deal of general unease with more serious punters, and surely other trainers, if they feel a horse, or more importantly horses, are for some reason not running to their ability but then spring up when well backed. When it occurs a few times, a 19lb rise is the price paid.

No one ‘paid’ for Costalotmore’s 39-length win on Wednesday, it was a bit more of an embarrassment for the 14 amateur riders who allowed the leader to gain such a massive lead.

It was obvious from passing the stands the first time (not that the rest were capable of seeing the leader at that stage) that he was travelling very well and did not look to be running away, even if the view was “collectively” that the winner had “ran free for much of the race and slipped the field.”

It was not as if he did not have very decent form in the book. It was one of the worst examples of misjudgement but once it was ‘collectively’ done, very little sanctions were likely to be given out, especially to ‘amateurs’.